If you attend a Bucknell men’s tennis match, it won’t take long to figure out which court Tim Zelikovsky occupies. All you have to do is listen.
The only senior on this year’s Bison roster is also the team’s winningest player. Tim enters this weekend’s home matches with a stellar 16-1 singles record, including a perfect 7-0 mark in dual matches, for a young squad that is off to a 5-2 start. His 58 career singles wins put him just one away from moving into the top 10 on Bucknell’s all-time list, and his .725 career winning percentage is currently 10th-best in team annals.
Winning matches is important, of course, but Tim has also parlayed his success into the role of on-court cheerleader. Fans can hear him urging on a teammate on a neighboring court, or bellowing a rallying cry when a fellow Bison breaks his opponent’s serve. It’s all part of the fun of team tennis, and Tim admits that it has also had a positive impact on his own game.
“It’s very interesting, I was never this loud before I came to Bucknell,” Tim says. “I was a lot more focused, and maybe even a little too much in my own head. I would win a point and just quietly say to myself, ‘Let’s go.’ But then after I got to college and played a few matches, I saw how loud other teams were being, or how loud my teammates were, and I knew I could match that. It’s great to be in a position where you can express yourself positively. Negative emotion is something that I rarely ever show in a tennis match because I don’t like to waste energy or exert myself like that. Showing positivity is very important for me and the team.”
While professional tennis players are completely locked in on themselves, collegiate players are still competing individually, but for the betterment of the team. All six players are on the courts at the same time, and they support each other just like in any other team sport.
“I’ve recently realized that tennis matches are sometimes dependent only on a few points. For example, it might be a deuce point and it’s 3-all in the set, so winning that game could put you on the path to win the set. So if I were to see one of my teammates hit a winner, I’m definitely going to be loud about that and make sure everyone knows the Bison just scored a big point. It motivates all six of us, and it might also put a little bit of worry in the opponents’ minds.”
Tim’s game has evolved significantly since he first touched a tennis racket at the age of five. His parents, Michael and Svitlana, emigrated to Canada from Ukraine around 1990. His dad is a pharmacist, and after receiving his Canadian certification, they settled in the Toronto suburbs and raised two sons, Martin and Tim.
One day young Tim tagged along at his older brother’s tennis lesson, and he recalls that being the first time he held a tennis racket.
“I used to play with my dad on this miniature court with those large styrofoam balls. He was more of a recreational tennis player. I think he read a book on how to play tennis, but that’s how I got my start.”
Tim’s first formal coaching came at a local Russian tennis club in Canada, and he started playing in tournaments at the U8 level. At the age of 12, he played in the Orange Bowl junior tournament qualifier in Miami, which was his first time traveling outside of Canada, and one of his first major events with an international field. He lost in the first round but did very well in the consolation matches, which filled him with confidence that he could compete against very good players.
Tim harbored some thoughts of turning professional, but by the age of 13 he realized that the future pros were not only at a different level athletically, but they also had the resources to play around the world with training entourages while going to school online. Tim preferred the traditional education route, attending public schools in person throughout his upbringing. Around the age of 16, he joined a new tennis club – the Richmond Hill Country Club – and his coaches there started to mold his game toward the style of college tennis.
“Those coaches brought the idea of college tennis to me. I had never even considered playing Division I tennis until they brought it up to me. They helped me upload a video to one of the recruiting sites. About an hour after the video was posted, the first email I received was from Bruce Myers at Bucknell.”
With that connection made, Bucknell was the first school Tim visited, and he quickly took a liking to his future teammates, the campus, and the small class sizes that reminded him of school back in Canada.
“I wanted to go to a college where I would be more than just a statistic, like at some of the big public universities. And then after coming to Bucknell, I realized how much value there is in the Bucknell degree. That’s something I didn’t even consider, but now I’m really proud to reach out to other Bucknellians and call myself a Bison.”
Bucknell just missed a berth in the Patriot League Tournament final last season, falling 4-3 to top-seeded Navy in the semis. Tim’s final shot at a championship is still several weeks away, and in the meantime, he is also focused on his future as a computer programmer.
A Dean’s List student majoring in computer science, Tim would be following in his older brother’s footsteps in that endeavor as well. Martin played tennis at McMaster University in Canada, earned his degree in physics engineering, and now works as a network engineer for Amazon in California.
Tim took his first programming course in the ninth grade and enjoyed it, but his intent was to major in business in college until Martin convinced him to go the computer science route. Last summer, Tim was a software engineering intern at H&R Block, where he used artificial intelligence to create an application that helped streamline the user experience on the company’s tax software platform.
Tim, who also serves as a residential advisor in an on-campus affinity house and as a teaching assistant for an introductory Python course, is a proponent of AI.
“I think it’s important to use the AI tools that we have available to us and learn to leverage those technologies to make processes more efficient. Time is really our most valuable resource. So if I can make an engineering team’s time more efficient and allow them to focus on more pressing matters rather than mundane tasks that AI could simply do, it’s a benefit to the company. For example, in my internship at H&R Block, I had to learn a new language that I had never heard of that Microsoft owns. But AI was fully knowledgeable and aware of this language. So rather than spending time learning this language myself, I assigned AI to do it, and the end result still met the goal of allowing the user to see any metric that they wanted to on their dashboard.”
Tim is currently in the job market and figures he will likely head back to Canada, at least at the start of his career. His home in Thornhill has grown by two since he left for college, as just in the last year his maternal grandparents fled the war in Ukraine and are now living with his parents.
“They were hesitant to leave, but we managed to convince them, and they have been living in our house for about a year now. They were bombing the city that they lived in, the city of Kyiv. I’ve personally been there about seven times and it’s a beautiful city, but we finally convinced them to move. Now they are applying for Canadian citizenship, and our home is so much more vibrant now because that worry is gone. My brother and I are out of the house, and my grandparents are filling that space.”
The same outgoing personality that fans see on the tennis courts is also paying dividends from a career networking perspective. Tim says he has spoken to several alumni in the tech field, one of them being former Bison women’s tennis star Maria Cioffi, who is now a software engineer at Grant Street Group in Pittsburgh.
Tennis is a lifetime sport, so even though his competitive days might be over once he graduates, you won’t find him far from the courts. A future in pickleball might even be in the cards.
“Pickleball is a bit less cardio-intensive, but it’s very fun and a lot of people have gotten into it because it’s not as physically intense and the learning curve is much lower than tennis. It’s also a great social sport and a great way to network and meet people. I’ll for sure never play tennis as well as I’m playing it right now, but I will always love the sport.”
And as Tim approaches the end of an outstanding collegiate career, his love for tennis is obvious to the eyes – and ears – of Bucknell’s faithful supporters.
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